


The Road to Hell is Paved wth Good Intentions

by vinegardog



Category: Farscape
Genre: Gen, Humor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-01
Updated: 2016-10-01
Packaged: 2018-08-18 22:40:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,267
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8178737
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vinegardog/pseuds/vinegardog
Summary: John entertaining Little D gives Noranti an idea





	

 

Written for SC90 – Granny’s Done it Again hosted by strangewebby  
  
Set approximately 8 monens after the end of Peacekeepers Wars   
  
Rating: PG  
  
Word count: about 2170  
  
The characters aren’t mine, just borrowing them to play for a little bit.  
  
Written while in work during a bad case of the doldrums so, between phone calls and questions from colleagues, you are getting what you are getting!  
  
Thanks to a Damned Scientist for the beta read!   
  
**The Road to Hell is Paved with Good Intentions (PG)**  
  
“Where is the baby?” John cooed at Little D while bringing his large hands up to his face, splaying them wide and making his features disappear from his son’s view.  
  
The baby was sitting in his DRD-built high-chair in the middle of Centre Chamber, face smeared with the messy remains of some sort of mashed food that, as always, Noranti had prepared for him and of which Little D surprisingly never seemed to get enough.  The goo was purple in colour and porridge-like in consistency and John really didn’t want to know what it was made of, ‘What you don’t know, can’t  hurt you’ having become his philosophy and daily mantra about food and drink since he had arrived in the UTs.  So far, apart from a few vomiting and other violently explosive incidents that he had wisely chosen to forget about, that credo had mostly worked out for him.  The proof being that here he was, alive and kicking, and playing with his 8 month-old chubby, healthy and gorgeous baby boy a game he had seen his sister Susan play with Bobby a hundred times before when Bobby had been D’s young age.  
  
After a few microts of silence punctuated only by D’Argo’s expectant and fretting garbles, the tension was finally broken by a loud “THERE is the baby!” Uttered  with glee by John and followed by his popping out from behind his hands and his leaning forward, which brought his smiling face closer to D’s and allowed his eyes to lock on to his son’s.  At this point, Little D, as it always happened without fail, exploded in an avalanche of loud giggles and tried to grab John’s nose before bringing his own podgy little hands to his own face in mimicry of what he had just seen his father do.  
  
When the giggles started fading, John leaned back away from D and again, covering his face, asked: “Where is the baby?” And the process started all over again.    
  
This game of theirs sometimes went on for a quarter of an arn or more before D, belly full with his favourite food and flagging with tiredness from all the excitement, would start looking dazed – his laughing less explosive, his eyes drooping to half-mast and the bud of his mouth stretching wide open in irrepressible, multiple yawns.  That was when Aeryn would usually step in, pick the baby up and settle him for his after lunch nap, which was exactly what she did right now with a loving smile directed at their offspring and the tiniest shake of her head -  tolerance and disapproval fuelling it in equal but opposite measures - directed at her husband.    
  
“I am beginning to fear that he will never get tired of this silly, little game of yours, John.” She sighed and added: “Surely you could find a way to entertain him with something a little bit more intelligent than this?” She said while she wiped away the food smears from D’s face.  She then cradled his head to her shoulder with one hand and at the same time gently rubbed his back to encourage him to stop fighting sleep with the other.  
  
“Sweetheart, I will have you know that ‘Where is the Baby’ is an activity highly recommended by Earth’s developmental psychologists to help infants understand object permanence...” John attempted to explain but, alas, in vain as the last few words of his speech ended up being addressed to Aeryn’s back as she turned away from him and walked to the exit portal heading out towards their quarters where D would spend the next arn or so asleep in his cot, building his energy back up for more games with dad later that evening.  
  
If, on one hand, Aeryn had appeared to ignore him completely, he soon learnt that on the other hand Noranti, who had been cooking D’s supper for later on the far side of the room, had been paying close attention.  “So, that game you play with the baby all the time – about him disappearing, it helps the boy develop future, useful skills?” She asked with interest.  
  
John stood up from his stool in front of the high-chair, stretched out with a groan of contentment and strolled over to where Noranti was standing.  He lifted the lid of one of her pots, looked into it and almost gave in to the temptation of dipping his finger in for a taste before remembering that, although pleasant enough to the smell, most of her concoctions tasted of dirty socks dipped in Gorgonzola cheese with a side of overcooked Brussels sprouts.  He replaced the lid and wisely opted instead for the safety of a food cube from the pantry, which he started to nibble on while leaning against the countertop.    
  
“Yeah, Granny.” He finally answered her. “Babies need constant stimulation and interaction to learn about the space surrounding them and these ‘silly’ games - as my dear wife calls them - help the development of their sensory and motor functions.” John said then shrugged, not sure if the Old Woman had understood any part of his explanation, his mind fast wandering to other, considerably more enthralling things, such as how he planned to give Aeryn another 10 minutes to get D fast asleep before he would join her in their quarters for some sensory fun and games of their own.    
  
Noranti nodded in acknowledgement, pretty certain that she had understood exactly what John had meant.  As a grand plan formed in her mind her third eye opened wide - a vermilion flash lighting it up momentarily - and her wrinkly face broke into a wide smile; all of which escaped the attention of the distracted Human who was now whistling a cheerful tune to himself while walking out on his wife’s trail with a skip and a bounce in his step.   
____________  
  
Later that evening, Little D was back in his high-chair and Aeryn had just about finished feeding him another one of Noranti’s culinary creations – a bright green one this time - when John came bounding in from his afternoon maintenance chores, ready for some well-earned quality time with his family.   
  
“Mmhmm, that looks… yummy!”  He said, unconvincingly, eyeing up the green, congealed mush left over in D’s bowl with barely concealed disgust.  He then pulled the stool over, sat on it, grabbed little D’s bare feet in his hands, lifted them up to his mouth and blew a raspberry on their sole making the boy squeal and laugh and twist away in his high-chair at the intense tickling sensation.    
  
“Another educational game of yours, I see.” Aeryn commented wryly while clearing the spoon and bowl away before her two children – the little one and the grown up one – could send them flying to the floor.  
  
John winked at D and in a conspiratorial tone of voice loud enough to reach his wife, he faux-whispered: “Let’s really give you Mother something to complain about, eh D?!”  He then brought his hands up to his face and asked loudly: “Where is the baby?”  
  
At the other end of Centre Chamber, Aeryn rolled her eyes at her husband’s antics, although a little smile creased her lips in spite of herself.  
  
Little D recognized his favourite game straight away and let out a high-pitched shriek of joy to signal his approval of his father’s choice of activity, then quieted and waited as he was expected to do by the rules of the game.  John, his eyes covered, counted to ten and then lowered his hands again with a booming: “THERE is the…” But the words died on his lips.  The baby was nowhere to be seen.  All that was in front of him was an empty high-chair.  John looked around thinking that Aeryn had  played a joke of her own on him by removing D while he wasn’t looking – damn it but the woman could be as stealthy as a cat when she wanted to be! - however the look of puzzled horror he saw on her face from across the room told him without need for words that she had not taken the baby  and that she had no clue where he was either.    
  
In perfect unison, they sprang into action: John scrambled to his feet upending the stool he had been sitting on and Aeryn rushed to the side of the high-chair.  Both, however, were stopped dead in their frantic tracks by D’s giggling coming from the exact spot where it was expected to come: the high-chair right in front of them.  The happy sound was there but there was no visible baby attached to it!  
  
“Where the frell **IS** the baby?” Aeryn asked angrily, looking at John with eyes made huge by anxiety; she hoped against hope that John would have an explanation, that he might just have taken the game a step further than normal and that D’s disappearance was just part of this stupid Erp educational experiment of his.  
  
Their son’s giggles meanwhile, now a little more subdued given that D could see but not understand his parents’ agitated behaviour, continued trickling towards them from the empty space in front of them.  
  
“Aeryn, I don’t have a frelling clue where D’Argo’s disappeared to!” John replied, his eyes still riveted to the spot where his son was meant to be but wasn’t. “I…I didn’t do this.  I wouldn’t!  I swear…”   
  
The sound of hands clapping accompanied by the happy exclamation of: “It worked! The potion in his food really worked!” coming from Noranti’s side of the room interrupted John and made both parents turn in her direction; John was breathing heavily, the panic making him short of breath as if he had just run a marathon and Aeryn’s hand twitched ominously on the grip of the pulse pistol strapped to her thigh.  
  
“What. Did. You. Say?”  Aeryn’s clipped question delivered in the most threatening of tones made John quaver in his boots even though, on this occasion, it was not directed at him.  The menace of it, however, seemed to totally sail over Noranti’s head.  
  
“I said: it worked! I spent all afternoon perfecting it and it worked!” The Old Woman said with a huge, proud smile which left even Aeryn speechless for a moment.  
  
“But… but why?!  Why would you do that to us and… and to D!?” John asked in dismay, his mind reeling and unable to come up with a better question. “What did we ever do to you?!”  
  
“Well, earlier today you said that the game would help him develop sensory and motor skills but he wasn’t really disappearing, was he? So I made it happen for real.” She winked and added: “To help him acquire better abilities and… and to help you be more efficient with your teaching methods of course!” Noranti was now genuinely baffled by their negative reaction to her most excellent work and, frankly, also quite a bit peeved at their blatant ingratitude.  
  
A laden silence followed her explanation, then, Aeryn, voice low and terrifying, said: “Fix it.  Fix it now!”  
  
“Oh well, my dear, I would love to but I’m afraid that might take some time.” Noranti tittered nervously, the tension in both John and Aeryn’s bodies finally bringing home to her that she might be in a certain degree of imminent danger. “You see, I spent ALL day on making the disappearing potion but I didn’t really have time to come up with an antidote… not yet that is…” Her words petered out and, to her credit, she at least had the good grace to pale when Aeryn slowly - oh ever so slowly - unsheathed her pulse pistol and pointed it straight at the Old Woman’s third eye.  
  
John, who had been rooted to the spot during Noranti’s disclosure, was finally jolted into action when he realized that Aeryn’s finger had started squeezing the trigger. He stepped in front of his wife shielding the Old Woman with his own body and in as placating a tone of voice as he could muster, he appealed to her: “Aeryn, honey, look at what you’re doing: you are pointing the gun at the only person who can figure out how to bring D back to us!”  
  
An intense, internal fight of sorts raged at the back of Aeryn’s grey eyes before she finally, reluctantly, lowered the gun.  Ignoring the Witch completely, she looked John straight in the eyes and snapped: “Make her fix it, NOW! I want MY son back!” Leaving him in no doubt whatsoever that she blamed him just as much as she blamed Noranti for what had happened to _her_ son.  
  
John turned back to the Old Woman with the full intention of lighting a blue-hot fire under her tail and get her working on that antidote pronto, but found that, after all, there was no need for further inciting words or threatening encouragements: Noranti was already back at her hobs rifling through her vast stash of herbs and moving with a concentration, alacrity and swiftness that would have been the envy of any woman 150 cycles her junior.    
  
THE END


End file.
